Saltbreakers

Nonesuch;
2007

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It's a law of musical physics that any sound's revival brings with it an initial burst of momentary promise followed by a flood of weak imitation, reminders of why the resurrected genre was ever crucified in the first place. The most recent demonstration of this principle has been taking place in the world of literary indie-folk, with the creative canals excavated by peeps like Sufjan Stevebs, Joanna Newsom, and Colin Meloy quickly being filled in by the sewage of less imaginative peers. For every artist drawing inspiration from the artier end of the singer-songwriter playbook, be it re-emphasizing storytelling in lyrics or baroque arrangements, there are 10 who try to jump on the bandwagon merely by hollowly hitting enough signifiers to pass a surface inspection.

Full disclosure: I filed Laura Veirs in this latter group after seeing her open for Sufjan Stevens' Illinois tour, playing a set saturated with self-satisfaction capped by the contrived cleverness of Veirs and her band donning mining helmets for a song called "Spelunking". For a few songs, Saltbreakers makes me feel like a bitter, harsh asshole for being so quick to judge, before slowly floating back to confirm most of my suspicions. While ultimately harmless, it's a perfect example of the mediocrity that comes in the wake of innovative revivalists, routinely competent "smart" songs that aim low and leave no impression on landing.

But as I said, the first part of the record isn't quite so dispiriting, from the springy opener "Pink Light" to the tentative but agreeable flirtation with skittering drum loops that adds unique flair to "Don't Lose Yourself". Fourth track "Drink Deep" employs Veirs' obsession with elemental fire and water imagery to strong effect, set to a piano waltz that sounds appropriately booze-y and fringed with woozy mellotron on the chorus breaks. The Veirs-Liz Phair vocal comparison is already a cliché, but the resemblance (especially double-tracked, as it frequently is here) really is strong; it's range-limited but rich, and sounds best when Veirs keeps her affectations light and her lyrics free of forced juvenilia.

Unfortunately, the rest of the record doesn't really follow that prescription, as the one clunker of the album's opening foursome indicates. "A handful of dream-dust for my pirate," the dreary "Ocean Night Song" begins, and a thousand alarm bells go off. There are few moments as cringe-worthy as that, but the record grows soggy with Veirs' over-reliance on nautical themes, a particularly suspicious concept given her friendly association with the similarly sea-obsessed Decemberists. When water isn't on the brain, it's that other crutch of the poetry class, animal personification, that dominates, on the equally forgettable "Nightingale" and "Black Butterfly".

Maybe it's unfair to focus on the lyrics, but the music consistently does little to draw one's focus after the opening flurry, settling comfortably into adult-contemporary guitar-or-piano territory. One attempt to stretch a composition out into Sufjan-scope, "To the Country", only serves to show how hard it is to pull off the elements that have become Stevens trademarks: the droning unison backing vocals proving it's difficult to write good choral parts, the incessant violin riff making a similar case for orchestration training. Meanwhile, half-hearted rocker "Phantom Mountain" only serves to prove that Veirs is most comfortable at a midtempo jog, as on the pleasant but unremarkable "Saltbreakers" or "Wandering Kind".

For listeners who get their kicks off demonstrations of just plain old solid, straightforward songwriting, perhaps songs like these are a thrill. But for an artist already into her fifth studio album, it's a pretty low bar to set, and predictably produces only the occasional B-grade highlight that wouldn't be noticed where it not for the famous company Veirs keeps. Perhaps it's the desire to be included in the indie-folk club that holds Saltbreakers back; were it not stuck on fashionable sea imagery and awkward orchestration, Veirs could better carve out an identity of her own, enough so to become more than just the barnacle to a revival's whale.